He leered at me and shouted, so that everybody in the car could hear: “You are, eh? Well, you are a damned old stinker.” It was Schmidt, the teamster man. I didn’t mind that, but the ladies all heard him, and laughed immoderately, for which no particular blame could, would or should be, as the case may be, attached to them. But it knocked my high and mighty ideas of glorified officialdom into a cocked hat. Another time, but there was no brick in this one, in travelling through the Canadian Rockies an American lady in the observation car asked the name of a particularly lofty mountain. Here, I thought, was an appreciative audience of one whom I could illuminate. I told her it was Mount Tupper, named after one of Canada’s greatest statesmen, and that on the other side was Mount Macdonald, called after Canada’s Grand Old Man, and that the two mountains had once been united, as Sir John and Sir Charles were, but that in the very long ago the irresistible forces of Nature had split them in twain. The lady seemed greatly interested, and I, in my middle-aged simplicity, went on to point out the “picturesque figure of the Hermit, which with cowl and faithful dog, carved out of hardened rock, had stood watch and ward all through the long centuries of past and gone ages, and that until eternity they would be on guard as living symbols of the wonderful works of an omniscient Creator.” And she said: “My, how cute!” Any aspirations I may have had concealed about my person of ever rivalling Demosthenes immediately subsided, and it gradually dawned upon me that as a silver-tongued orator I wasn’t even in the same class with William Jennings Bryan, Newton Rowell or Mayor Hylan of New York. [Illustration: AT THE SAN FRANCISCO FAIR. A GATHERING OF AMERICAN JOURNALISTS.] Mayor Hylan and the Queen That reminds me of something altogether different—the mention of Mayor Hylan’s name—which has nothing whatever to do with the case, but as I am writing these reminiscences higgledy piggledy, just as they occur to me, the reader needn’t mind. When the King and Queen of Belgium visited New York, His Honor was greatly in evidence. He is very democratic, you know, whatever that may be. He introduced His Majesty to one of his friends in this way: “King, this is Mister Jack Walsh, one of our very best officials.” That was the democratic way, all right enough, but he went one better in the afternoon, when there was a grand parade of school children, which was reviewed by Belgium’s royalty. The grouped children to the number of ten or fifteen thousand sang the national anthems of America and Belgium to the intense delight of their Majesties. After the function was ended, Her Majesty gratefully acknowledged to His Honor her great pleasure at witnessing such a sublime spectacle.